Indie filmmaker James Green’s Victory To The Mimers manages to say a lot in just 15 minutes. Here’s our review.
The Miners’ strike of 1984 is a seminal part of British history. The clashes between protesters and police were violent and ugly and the strike has since become a popular topic for filmmakers. Directors such as Ken Loach, Stephen Daldry and even Hayao Miyazaki have taken inspiration from the events.
The latest director to find inspiration from it is James Green, though his short film Victory To The Mimers isn’t directly about the miners’ strike at all. You might have already guessed it, but it’s not the miners who are striking here, but mimers.
For Ernie, miming has been the family trade for decades, and he’s not about to give it up despite the government’s best efforts to kill the arts. Ernie leads a group of mime artists in a practice for a silent protest, but there’s also a looming audition and an old family feud to deal with.
There’s an eerie similarity between the film’s setting and today’s issue with state funding and support for the arts. We don’t learn much about the government in Victory To The Mimers, but it’s enough to know arts aren’t a priority.
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Ultimately, though, Victory To The Mimers is about family. Ernie is fighting to keep the family trade and tradition alive, but even his own daughter finds it difficult to join him. The arrival of his estranged brother – who has chosen the disgraced profession of performing as a human statue – reignites their old quarrel. There’s a lot of power in what Green is communicating here and the final scene is an exhilarating ode to the bond between brothers.
Victory To The Mimers flies by. So much so that the short film is over before it can ever properly start. With such a brilliant twist on such a huge political event, Victory To The Mimers could even – presumably if it’d had the resources – even been a tad longer, just to open up the world a little more and give it a bit of breathing room.
You can find out more information about Victory Of The Mimers here.
